31 Dec Healthcare Policy should take care of the health and wellbeing of all people

“The medical literature supports the fact that when people are allowed to live as their gender identity … this reduces the amount of eating disorders, substance abuse, mental health crisis, suicide rates,” said Erica Rotondo, a Madison physician who provides care primarily to transgender and non-gender conforming patients.

By the time Rotondo sees most of her patients, she said, transitioning is a matter of necessity.

“This is life and death for people. I wouldn’t deny somebody their blood pressure pills,” she said, likening transgender care to any other medical care.

————————————————————————————————————————

Yesterday was disheartening and a step backwards when it comes to healthcare policy, and the insurance-driven medical establishment. The Affordable Care Act supported the health of all people and said insurance companies could not choose to deliberately exclude Transgender healthcare. Many insurance companies would now include Trans-specific healthcare to their members…just like they include cardiovascular-specific healthcare, diabetic-specific healthcare, and other medically necessary healthcare to their members. Well, Transphobic forces said, “Hey, wait a minute! How dare you tell us we can’t be Transphobic! We will fight you and make sure that health insurance companies can exclude Trans-specific healthcare. But we will leave cardiovascular-specific, diabetic-specific, and other healthcare coverage intact. We will just target Trans individuals. You are welcome, Transphobic population.” events are as clear as they can be (the four stipulations are murky and basically translate to “we will cover Trans healthcare until the minute we are no longer forced to do so”) in this Cap Times article I quoted above.

I for one am sick to death of healthcare being used as a tool to discriminate against Trans people.